G20 for boosting online anti-terror fight

The Group of 20 major economic powers have stepped up its fight against terrorism with US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreeing to create a bilateral working group to address cybersecurity.

The G20 campaign will focus on terrorist activities on the internet, said German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who chairs the G20 summit.

Action on the issue had been promoted at the summit by Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

Under their plan, the G20 wanted to call on internet providers to act quickly to remove terrorist content on their internet platforms, Merkel said on Friday.

She said the G20 members wanted to make clear that they "expect such things to be deleted quickly" adding that such matters were "time-sensitive" when it comes to terrorist propaganda.

The G20 is also planning action to crack down on the financial sources for terrorists, underlining the sense of urgency about the anti-terrorist fight by including in its final declaration.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday that the US and Kremlin leaders had agreed to set up the cybersecurity working group at a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit, the Russian news agency TASS reported.

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"It was agreed that all of these issues, including anti-terrorism efforts, the fight against organised crime and hacker activities in any of their manifestations will be a focus of bilateral Russian-US cooperation," TASS quoted Lavrov as saying.

"A bilateral working group will be set up for these ends," Lavrov said.